


death is no parenthesis

by Yatzuaka



Category: Altered Carbon (TV), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Altered Carbon Fusion, Another tedious fusion fic, F/M, Sex, The swears, oh the irony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-05 10:42:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16366334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yatzuaka/pseuds/Yatzuaka
Summary: In the future, human consciousness is stored in a cortical stack.





	death is no parenthesis

**Author's Note:**

> I literally do not know how describe this, except that there's a lot of fucking cursing. 
> 
> Title from e e cummings 'since feeling is first'
> 
> Please excuse any lingering grammar and spelling weirdness. This was written on my kindle and I'm in a deathmatch with my autocorrect. Which of us will emerge victorious remains unclear.

The body she is trying to fuck into sweet, sweaty oblivion is nearly as familiar as her own. Before, they'd been partners then friends, then lovers, and it shouldn't feel like cheating that she is here, now, grinding down on his cock. It does nonetheless, because it's not _him_ behind the pale blue eyes she's looked into countless times.

 _He's_ never going to know, she thinks desperately. She needs this. She _deserves_ this. She's worked so hard trying to keep it together, trying to stay afloat. It's just friction and the release of chemicals, and it doesn't mean anything. 

Darcy looks up, the tremble in her thighs a telling reminder that she had avoided the gym for too long, an ache settling deep in her muscles, and she is _almost there_. If she could just _let go_ it would have been over already, but she's stuck in her head, a whole variety pack of guilt spilled open on the sticky floors in her mind. Being of Jewish and Catholic descent, she is something of an expert on the subject of guilt, even if she eschews religion as a general rule nowadays. That doesn't mean she knows how to guard herself from it, it just means she can recognize it.

Her fingers curl into talons, nails clawing into soft flesh as she tries and fails to find the sensation that will tip the scales, and _this one_ grunts under her, somewhere below her periphery. 

It occurs to her that she should dust the ceiling. 

Maybe this one can tell that her interest is fading rapidly, that he hasn't managed to capture her attention. Maybe that's why he pushes off the bed, flipping them over so smoothly he remains buried deep.

She closes her eyes rather than to look at him, but he leans in close. There is no escaping the differences between the two people who have inhabited the body on top of her, not when the breath against her ear pants with a wholly altered cadence. The curve of this one's spine as he arches is likewise new, the angle of his hips setting her firmly off balance. Under the familiar smell of cigarettes, there's something new; this one uses a different soap.

This one hadn't spent those nights with her, determined to figure out what sorts of touches brought her pleasure, how much pressure to apply to specific areas to make her squirm. That's not to say he's clumsy, though. This one moves with animal, unnatural grace, utterly at home in the skin not his own. At the gentle touch of his finger on her clit, she hisses _Harder_ through clenched teeth, and he obeys without hesitation. That's all it takes, thankfully. 

The orgasm doesn't satisfy her. If anything, it makes her thoughts press closer.

It's been almost a year since she'd had sex with someone not herself, since her partner-friend-lover went batshit and ended up on ice. This one isn't supposed to be here, she's kept up with the body mortgage, and yes it's old news, but -

She wouldn't even be here - wet and sore, leaking emotions and fluids like a broken sex-bot - if the fucking Meths played by the rules. By the _law_. The presence of his body still cuts deep - a sharp hook into her psyche, tearing carefully layered civility and duty from the endless wellspring of her anger. It fuels stubbornness that so easily turns to intransigence, and that has always been her undoing.

Sitting up, her back curls with the dawning realization that she has played straight into the Meths twisted game. She has allowed them to toy with her emotions, to push her around as though she's nothing more than a wet-behind-the-ears rookie. To those rich, old fucks she's an instrument among an orchestra to direct, a pawn to shift across a board only they can see, and sacrifice when most convenient. She's done exactly what the Meths expected and lost her perspective, her focus so narrowed that she missed the forest for the trees. 

While her mind whirls with self-recriminations, this one carries her into the shower, almost but not quite shielding her from the initial blast of frigid water. It shocks her out of her thoughts, somehow exactly what she needed. In a minute, the water is too hot, and this one squeezes too much soap into the loofah, the dense foam making it a challenge to get her legs a solid grip around his waist. He ends up pressing her against the cold tile before he pumps into her, and it's a moment she's already lived through, caught and replayed. She loses the ability to track her place in time.

It could have been last year, days after they moved in, that time when Mamá was supposed to come over to cook for them, a meal to put meat on their bones. 

It had never come to pass, but it could have.

It might still. 

Of everything she could change about that investigation, about that final culmination and confrontation, the last night, the one that had cost her love both his grip and later his freedom, she wouldn't have said _If_. The look on his face as he lowered his service weapon - that smooth, hopeless desolation - haunts her.

There's a single coherent thought before her orgasm gives her the blessed solitary heartbeat of total quiet in her mind she craves like Steve's body needs nicotine. It's that she would learn from that mistake, and try to believe what this one, what _Loki_  deigns to tell her.

* * *

At some point she had stopped seeing Steve in his face.

Despite their combined efforts to the contrary, Darcy and Loki had formed a bond between them that went beyond whose body he wore and the sex they kept having. Maybe that's what she'd been afraid of all along, calling him _this one_. Flaying him with the edge her tongue, sticking him with an illegal tracking device, which had actually turned out to be quite fortuitous, under the circumstances. (Who had he seen as she dragged him out of that building bleeding, brokenly mumbling her name? It certainly hadn't been Darcy.)

The others he gathered to him - with Envoy guile and Meth money, promises upon lies - defined rag-tag. Pietro and Wanda, twins who'd been broken apart by this world and put themselves back together one too many times for their cracks to ever heal. Ava Starr, who didn't flinch when she found herself out of cold storage and suddenly in a random body, loyal to the siblings above all things. She'd done things with datastreams Darcy had thought impossible. JARVIS, the AI who only wanted to serve, and found such need in them all as to nearly slake his desperate programmed thirst. His loss wouldn't be mourned by many, but it was felt deeply by those few.

The fact that any one of them survived tearing a shining castle from the sky and casting it, and it's inhabitants, into the deepest, darkest depths to rust and rot is nothing short of a miracle. Death, true death, had seemed so certain she wonders now at her enthusiasm for the plan. 

She's never quite grasped the precise concept of irony - outright, blunt sarcasm is more her thing - but that Steve had been right all along surely counts. 

That it had been Wanda who saves them seems heavy on the irony, too.

She'd known since her first week after graduating the Academy, there were cases one was actively discouraged from pursuing, and suddenly so many of those forbidden mysteries are just solved. Wrapped up tight, a bed made with hospital corners, sheets stretched taut enough to bounce a quarter off of. It's not perfect, but then nothing ever is. It's a hollow victory, tainted with the knowledge that justice will not be served for the people like her dead partner, Misty Knight, whose killers are even now feeding the fishes. Vengeance will have to suffice. 

She forgets herself and crushes another mug, spilling hot coffee everywhere. It's weird, she feels the burn of scalding liquid through her clothes, but it doesn't hurt. The closest she comes to explaining it is that her pain receptors know the signals they're receiving aren't precisely real. She wipes her hand off on her borrowed sweatpants. 

Is it planning or fate or sheer dumb luck that led them all to this not entirely unsatisfying conclusion?

Envoys were legendary, but was Loki truly that good?

200 years since Loki's stack had been so much as spooled up, and somehow he found exactly the people he needed to complete a mission he hadn't even known he had and wasn't close to the one he'd been tasked with. Loki had changed a small part of the current intersection between justice and politics, and Darcy would forever be grateful for that.

This Envoy who called them friends with one breath and cannon-fodder with the next, made sure she was made more than whole after being torn apart. She's fucking state-of-the-art.

 _(Loki_ , she'd whispered, after waking up from her surgery. After dying. She'd touched his face and felt safe enough to fall back asleep.)

She scratches the seam where her real skin meets the synthetic, and decides that she'll waste no more time resenting the pieces of her that were forged. Her new parts are top of the line, and the ability to crush concrete with her fingers is pretty damned cool. Darcy ignores the thought that she never would have survived storming the castle otherwise.

He's a fucking hard act to follow, and part of her hopes that Steve will keep the tattoo. Loki had gotten it not even 45 minutes after being re-sleeved, a compulsion he hadn't bothered to resist. She'd hated it at first sight, and now...

Darcy is not sorry Loki's criminal mastermind of a sister, Hela, is dead, but she is sorry her actions hurt him. Living too long twists a person's morals, Darcy is convinced, and she decides abruptly that she won't begrudge her abuelita's decision to stay inert. She can be sad about it, but she understands why her grandmother had made that decision.

On a smudged monitor tilted helpfully in her direction, Darcy watches as Wanda sneers at the poor detective tasked with taking her statement. She has more friends in the squad than she'd assumed, to be allowed this small courtesy while she waits impatiently for Steve to be processed. 

"I bloody well ran, dinnit I?" Wanda says, flicking synthetic hair back dramatically, and suddenly the ache at JARVIS' loss eases. Maybe he's not altogether gone.

"Detective Ortega?" a Uni says, leaning through the door, drawing attention to her presence. She hustles out before the murmurs of the lawyers and other detectives in the room become invectives. 

"Captain Rogers," the kid starts, eyes shining with hero-worship, as though Steve hadn't been busted down to a beat cop a year and a half ago; persona non grata, driven practically insane by the unexplained death of his best friend, the hooker with the heart of gold, Bucky. Not a soul willing or able to change that he was put on ice when he got close to the truth, "is waiting for you in room D-110."

Blood pounds in her ears, belated panic blooming. _Where had Loki gone?_  

She hopes - fuck it - Darcy _prays_  that he was able to download into the body of his clone. How he'd manage that feat, she's not sure, but the events of the last few weeks have been so improbable as to be ludicrous. Him accomplishing that wouldn't be completely out of the realm of possibility. Which is to say that it's not unlikely he's riding the closest thing to his own body now, probably already tattooed with that eternal Envoy dragon. 

Because she had ended up wearing Loki's jacket after their spectacular landing just a few hours ago, it is, of course, sized for Loki, and thus Steve. She shrugs it off in anticipation of his chill-shakes, the most common side effect of Sleeve-sickness. Kid Rookie opens the door with a ridiculous flourish, and there he is.

It's _Steve._

It's not Loki, and she's fucking ecstatic. Oh, sweet, sweeping universe the recognition in his eyes is best thing she's ever seen. 

He smiles, and she knows exactly what she is supposed to see; relief and adoration. Likewise, she knows he blew up his entire life for just the _memory_ of Bucky. His face blurs for a moment, and she can almost envision Loki's grin, before she blinks it away. _Love is the fucking worst_ , she thinks as she comes in and wraps him up in the coat that had never carried his scent. 

"I missed you," she says, voice breaking like shattered glass.

* * *

"I think this is yours," Steve says, placing a familiar battered leather-bound notebook on the counter a few mornings later. "It was in that jacket."

Her favorite mug practically disintegrates in her hand, and she wonders if she'll ever get used to her new strength.

Steve smiles weakly, "I didn't read it. It's _his_ , right?"

She nods, and he nods, "Figured. Didn't feel right to," he pauses, and she can see the care he takes in picking the next word, "intrude. I think it's meant for you."

Darcy feels the stricken look on her face, and Steve's eyes narrow like they do when he's caught the scent of a lead. There's judgment there, as sharp as a backhand across her cheek. 

"I did what," she starts to say, full of righteous indignation, but Steve winces and waves a hand to stop her from finishing. 

"No, it's ok, I'm not judging you for what you had to do to -" she could hear the lie, clear as a ringing bell, in his voice as she grabs her holster, slinging it on before shrugging into her "real" leather jacket. 

"That's nice," Darcy interrupts, the book already secreted away, nestled in the small of her back.

She leaves before one of them ends up saying something the other couldn't forgive.

* * *

The small notebook is a testament to what infinite wealth will buy. It shouldn't be, considering the woman who'd written it. The woman who gave her everything to ensure that there would be no such thing as Meths. Everyone and their mother had been taught about the failed rebellion in school, but what had been purported as their true motivation was a lie. At this point in her life, that shouldn't have surprised her. 

Turns out she's just as gullible as anyone.

 _It was never supposed to be like this,_ the Quellchrist Falconer had written on the second page, uncertain and trembling, no trace of the rabid dog the Protectorate had such trouble putting down. _We just wanted to walk freely among the stars._

Reading the words of the infamous rebel, written in her own hand, with equations and doodles and notes cramped close the edges, reveal a woman who regretted and hoped just as much as Darcy did. She dreamed, naive and grand dreams; visions of galaxies of people beholden only to themselves, of service that wasn't indentured servitude. That surprises her more than finding her own name peaking out of drawings of trees. 

She'd had a partner building the first of the stacks, Jane. A cursory search on the Net reveals no obvious results, and she supposes that proves Loki's assertion that when the victors rewrite history, it's just another kind of war, waged after the battlefield killing is done, to murder the memory of the defeated.* Darcy knows where he cribbed it from now.

There's pages of what she assumes are speeches, words struck through with violent strokes of a pen, hard enough to leaves lines on the pages behind. She wishes she'd never read them. 

_Victory can have many meanings. Does that mean there's a way to beat virtual torture?_

_Do any of you know the story of ~~Jane Foster~~  Iphigenia Deme?  ~~Janey~~  Iffy to those of her friends who had not yet been taken by Protectorate Forces. _

_~~She was my best friend, sister of my heart and I loved her more than life. When we created that vessel to carry souls across the stars, we were unthinking of the consequences. We fought the release as soon as the unintended side effects became clear. Our hubris, our eagerness would cost so much, but we remained convinced that together we were unstoppable, that we could change the unchangeable,~~ _

_Iffy Deme was a great fighter on Adoracion ~~, though she'd be horrified to be remembered as such. She was a scientist, a dreamer~~._

  
_The Protectorate sent CTAC to pacify the planet._

_Those few of her family who'd escaped previously ~~, my dearest, most cherished, oldest friends,~~ were slaughtered._

_Iffy was captured, tortured. ~~I couldn't help her.~~_

_She died a hundred deaths. ~~I died, too. Or some part of me, the hopeful optimistic part. The good part.~~_

_They thought they had broken her. ~~More the fool them. Jane had never backed down from anything in her life.~~ Then she asked to see the top brass. Said she'd only confess to them._

_She got the top 17 CTAC officers on planet into a room with her, in the real._

_They didn't know she'd been implanted with enzyme-triggered explosives. ~~She'd insisted upon the procedure, seeing the writing on the wall long before I did. We argued. I left her there.~~_

_The enzyme was fury-related._

_When they were all around her, waiting for her to betray her fellow rebels, she let herself get angry._

_She turned the room and the surrounding 50 square meters into ash._

_Her last words, strapped to the interrogation table, where they'd tortured and killed her over and over again were "That's fucking enough." *2_

Darcy closes the book, unable to read on. She has to remind herself that her own family is safe and sound. 

If it's strange to learn she shared a name with the most famous woman since Helen of Troy, it's a cosmic joke that she shares another with a person erased. 

The shock on Loki's face when he'd first heard her given name makes sense now. He loves _that_ Darcy, has made her his true north, will never let her go quietly into the night. It'd be romantic if it wasn't an elegiac swan song.

She hopes Loki finds his Darcy. She hopes they walk among the stars, but she knows they will fight instead. They are Envoys, after all, and those particular stories are actually true. Warmongers and Peacetakers. (The Loki she came to know never did the easy thing, and her own words reveal that the other Darcy was just the same.)

And she, Darcy Jane Ortega, will be here, ready to help them however she can when the time comes. In the meantime, she has work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> *Altered Carbon, S01E02  
> *2 Altered Carbon, S01E04- a bit twisted, but taken from this episode.
> 
> If you've made it this far: Thanks for reading!


End file.
